Andrés Jaque completes ‘romola’, a super-marble restaurant in central Madrid
Andrés Jaque / office for political innovation has completed ‘ROMOLA’, a cafe and restaurant within a mid-century building in Madrid. Photographed here by imagen subliminal, the project transforms the former garage of Gutierrez Soto’s most significant building. While the original volume and structure remains in-tact, the experimental restaurant creates a new, open design at street level.

Described as a ‘marble-made tent in the galaxy’, the interiors stand out among the more common austere cafeterias of Madrid. In contrast to the overly used hydraulic tiles or red ceramic bricks, the design team employed vivid colors, furnishings, and high-end materials throughout the space.Andrés Jaque worked with a small number of marble manufacturers, leather upholsterers, metal benders and chrome-platers. The designers also collaborated with rare-wood panelers and artisan varnishers.

The condition of the marbles is registered by a number of technologies attached to it, such as the glass fiber and resin reinforcements. The articulated anchoring systems render the marble a sort of ‘supermarble’, capable not only of resisting compression, but also traction. In what has been a unique engineering challenge, the project takes this capacity to its limits, by creating a supermarble-made self-standing tent. The tent accommodates the customers’ tables and allows other uses such as cooking, which have been organized in a C-shaped periphery around it.

Design: Andrés Jaque Architects
Photography: imagen subliminal

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/andres-jaque-office-for-political-innovation-has-completed-romola-restaurant-12-16-2017/